Fear Not — Fart Not
At Least look Behind You First
The most difficult point in anyone’s relationship is the first fart. After you get that first one out of the way, the rest is easy.
My husband broke the ice for us. It was actually before we got married. I was a little surprised, and then I thought, “Well, everybody farts.”
Then, I resurrected the childhood rule the five of us kids had where the last one to knock on wood was the one who ate the fart in question. I can remember the seven of us piled into the old Rambler station wagon on another cross-country trip in the middle of summer as we went to a new military post. The kids next to the windows could roll them down and knock on the paneling on the outside of the car. The rest of us had to eat those farts while my mother tried to ignore us.
Yes, yes, I know it was gross, but my husband ate that first fart. After 46 years of marriage, we still do the knock-on-wood routine. Childish, but he’s my husband, and I’ve eaten my own share over the years.
We also developed a classification for some of them. SBD means silent but deadly. I looked it up on the Internet, and one definition of SBD is sex before dinner, which is a good one for the younger crowd. Another definition is slow but deadly, referring to how the government works. I’d say any government. Of course, LAD is loud and deadly when you’re talking about farts.
As we’ve gotten older, what were once toots have become the rumbling of huge locomotives.
I remember my father told me he would lean over and shake the dickens out of the big file drawer on his desk. He had those big military-type desks that made a lot of noise when the drawer rattled. My mother told me she always wanted to fart when she was in the library. Unfortunately, she had a job there. I asked her what she did. She said she’d go into the stacks where no patrons were around and pretend to shelve books.
Dennis said his father would look at the ceiling and say something about ducks.
It’s funny how people think about farts and how I miss all those farting folks in my life now that they are dead. Grief never stops, even for folk who talk to the dead.
Thanks for reading.
